I'm just curious. Is it the IndieGameStand store now? With a featured sale every 4 days?

I changed my bookmark to the /deal/, since I don't use the store. Just curious if this is a permanent thing and how people feel about it?

I have always loved the features and felt that is what made IGS unique (then the quick copycats came along daily and spotlight etc...). I guess the storefront has a higher profit margin for the operators, but I am sad to see the features taking a backseat to the store. At first I was excited for the store, but then it took over, and now I'm just confused.

I'll tell my kids someday that there used to be a site that was just a store, a site that was just an indie store, a site that only sold good old games, a site that just did a single feature and sites that just did bundles... now it seems like every site does everything, and for whatever reason I miss when each site did their own unique thing.

Kudos to IGS for doing the feature/daily/spotlight thing before anyone else though!

I'd actually be very interested to hear people's feelings on what they like better as our homepage. Here's a quick story about why we made the switch:

We felt like visitors didn't really know about our new store and wanted to alert people to this new feature. We talked about developing a widget or some other design changes to point people to the store webpage. We struggled with how we would do this though and then we realized that we really love the Deal Widget on the store homepage and feel like it does a great job showing off the game spotlighted - and switching the homepage was an easy change - so we gave it a try.

What drew me to IGS in the first place was the 4-day PWYW feature of a (mostly) un-hyped indie game that needed some attention directed to it, along-side the forums where the game could be discussed (and sometimes derailed into inane arguments) and the small sense of community that came from these features. Then the store front came along, and I didn't mind that it was one of many store fronts because it was still secondary to the 4-day deal.. Then the front page became the store front and the feature got pushed back to secondary status (in my mind) to the store. I understand that the entire idea behind a business is to make money, but what made IGS special in my mind was the focus on one indie game for that period of time until the next one came along. Obviously, that probably wasn't the most profitable strategy, but it was what made IGS different from steam, desura, gog, or any of the bundle "mega-sites". Now, it just feels like a store-front with revolving 4-day "daily deals" and has lost some luster in my eyes on account of this. The saving grace of this change to me is that the store front is not just a key-reseller for desura/steam, but still tries to focus on lesser known indie developed games, and for the most part offers DRM-Free downloads of all titles.

I'm not a business-minded person, so this is entirely subjective to how I perceive my relationship with IGS, but I feel that the store front and the 4-day feature should be separated at the domain level, where indiegamestand.com will always be the 4 day feature, and maybe something like indiegamestandstore.com is the store front. Again, I understand the entire idea behind a business is to make money, but it feels to me that the store front is taking away focus on what used to be IGS' strong-suit, the 4 day feature of an indie game that needed love and attention from a community. I could be completely off the mark, as I have not honestly looked into how the games that have been featured since the store front took over have fared compared to featured games pre-"store front as landing page." It could actually have a positive effect on sales of the feature and I'm just a curmudgeon who is resistant to change.

However, the positive things about the store front (easy for devs to get into it, easy for them to set their own discounts/sales when they want, DRM-Free downloads on most of the catalog, the nice design of it) are all good things for indie devs who dont necessarily fit within the conventions of the over-saturated steam store-front.

Anywho, that's my 2 1/2 paragraphs worth of input, take it as you will.

Know all of your enemiesWe know who all of our enemies aresteam : twitch : desuraWay to plant, Ann!

I won't get into all the development work of dividing into two separate domains since it's important from a backend standpoint to have everything on 1 domain/server, but I have setup http://www.indiegamedeal.com to forward to http://indiegamestand.com/deal/ for those that want an easy to use domain for the deal spotlight.

If anything, that's made it more confusing. Indiegamestand is now a store, and what it always used to be (single featured game) is relegated to a subpage, yet has its own new domain of indiegamedeal...

What should people be calling this deal/game? The indiegamestand indiegamedeal?

I think transition to "more store then sale" was inevitable. Not in bad meaning. Its just "why no?". IGS made some auditory over more then year of its operating, known to provide frequent updates, not like Desura (for example i cannot stop thank for featuring 3089 here), crossplatform friendly, keys for many (not all) game included...Its better built then ShinyLoot for example (albeit i kinda miss ability to view a LOT of games at once like on SL here) and so on.Yeah, i was surprised by unexpected switching to Store as main page but i dont see any harm here.Yes, ofc there is some feeling like "they abandoning deals now, dammit" but i doubt in it.Thing not stay same forever, pal, anyway. Its natural to grow and evolve. Still, i think some things need to be tweaked now.MAYBE it will be good if deal would be MORE highlighted on front page now, since its become main. Just take a look - "deal" card is in right upper corner, with only green background color difference from random gamecard showed under it. Its easy to actually miss it if you dont know where to see.

Anyway, as i said i dont think its really bad change. Maybe some sad through about things changing into something another, maybe some "dammit, another store" ideas, but still good.

Also, PlayerReview, i dont think DailyRoyale can be even near called copycat, since...umm...price, you know, usually dont even come near to IGS 96H deal. And its looks like Groupees SpotLight results was MUCH worse, (~600 of Inescapable vs little less 1300 here), i have some feeling like they may drop that format of sale on Groupees.

Personally, I don't like the being directed to the store page, instead of the deals page. It feels like the feature deal is greatly understated in the new design.

Now what does that mean for IGS? I'm not really sure. If the idea is to pivot away from the feature deal and move the focus more towards the store, then this move seems in line with the intentions. On the other hand, if IGS wants to keep the feature deal as the prime attraction, I think the balance between the feature deal and the store should be moved more in favor of the feature.

I think that this way, when deal is out of sight, will lead to lower performance of deal, that will lead to lower interest of developers in deal, that will worse games being featured and that will lead to disaster.

some compromise could be found. perhaps lead to deal on first day of deal and to store on other three? perhaps store in cookies when user last visited igs, and if he have not seen new deal lead him to it, and to store otherwise?perhaps just dedicating whole top section of store to igs deal promotion (that section where is slideshow now and all way to the right)?perhaps other way - making deal homepage but dedication top part of it for store promotion?

Subdomain might be an option; store.indiegamestand.com would be for store? Personally, I'm only interested in the feature, but I appreciate the effort that has been made to appease myself and the demographic I represent. Redirects are fine, but I would love the old model back. My colleagues at my IRL job have completely lost interest in checking IGS since the change. IndieGameStand had become a household name, but I fear it may fall into obscurity again without prominence and preference focused on the feature.

The extra money from the store is only as good inasmuch as there is still a visitor base consistently checking the site.

Perhaps IndieGameBundle.com could become the feature, although the name isn't accurate for single features. I would love to make something my bookmark that isn't a /deal/ or a redirect. I will respect whatever stance is chosen though and will most likely still check the deals every 4 days, although I admit I've lost interest after the transition. I'd like to think we have good times ahead, rather than reflecting on the good times of past, as is my current mindset.

Thats matter of taste. I use RSS2Jabber bot, so for me its much more convenient then going myself and check on site. And actually, RSS was made EXACTLY for such things - checking frequently updating stuff.

Thats matter of taste. I use RSS2Jabber bot, so for me its much more convenient then going myself and check on site. And actually, RSS was made EXACTLY for such things - checking frequently updating stuff.

Thats matter of taste. I use RSS2Jabber bot, so for me its much more convenient then going myself and check on site. And actually, RSS was made EXACTLY for such things - checking frequently updating stuff.

If I had things my way, IndieGameStand.com would resolve to the current feature, but navigation to the store would have much higher visibility than it does in the current design. As much as I have tired of indie bundles, I think HumbleBundle.com does a good job of this.